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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Expanding the gerontological imagination on ethnicity
— conceptual and theoretical perspectives | | Author(s) | Sandra Torres |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 35, no 5, May 2015 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, May 2015 |
| Pages | pp 935-960 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Ethnic groups ; Ageing process ; Theory ; Research Reviews. |
| Annotation | The globalisation of international migration has increased the ethnic diversity of most ageing populations across the Western world. This has implications for gerontological research, policy and practice, and puts our understandings of ethnicity to the test. This paper presents the different perspectives that inform ethnicity scholarship (the essentialist/primordial perspective, the structuralist/circumstantialist perspective and social constructionism). It suggests that the way in which we regard ethnicity has implications for how gerontological research is designed, how policies for old age are formulated, and how gerontological practice is shaped. Through a review of contemporary gerontological research on ethnicity published in some of gerontology's main journals, the paper discusses some of the trends observed, and concludes that most research seems to be informed by essentialism and structuralism. This suggests that the gerontological imagination on ethnicity has yet to be informed by the latest developments in ethnicity scholarship. The author urges gerontologists to broaden their understanding of ethnicity, and suggests that much could be gained if we were to let the social constructionist perspective on ethnicity and the notion of intersectionality be sources of inspiration for the gerontological imagination on ethnicity. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-150626003 A |
| Classmark | TK: BG: 4D: 3A:6KC |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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